Election countdown: Who won the social media battle?

With less than 72 hours left until the ballots are cast and counted and the winners named, the social media war machine is in overdrive to get the undecideds onside and the message out.

Which party won the social media battle, and will it help them win the war?

Liberals lead the polls – and the pack, online

The Liberals have leapt from third to first and in the 11th hour, but to those who track the numbers online, perhaps the stunning jump was foreseeable.

On Twitter, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has been performed a tour de force, with the most new followers since the writs were dropped at more than 93,000. Given he is also the leader with the most tweets, it’s perhaps easy to guess how he took that lead, but quantity isn’t the only reason for his success on Twitter.

“If you took any single one of them and compared them to a different party, it would be very hard to do a sort of apples to apples comparison,” prefaced Steve Ladurantaye, head of Canadian news and government partnerships for Twitter Canada.

“So the Liberals spent a lot of time doing personalized videos and speaking directly to voters on Twitter and responding to people from their own accounts, whereas the Conservatives had no intention of doing any of that… But then we look at Elizabeth May, who does an excellent job operating her own account and tweeting in her own voice and being authentic, which is amazing but you wouldn’t expect Stephen Harper to use Twitter in the same way as Elizabeth May does.”

Twitter Canada kept tabs on several factors, including the share of the conversation. Trudeau leads the pack with 36 per cent of tweets this campaign mentioning him, followed by NDP Leader Tom Mulcair at a distant second with 28 per cent and Harper with 25 per cent.

On Facebook, Trudeau has been both a trend-setter and a consistent leader.

His personal Facebook page has more likes than any other party and almost four times as many as Mulcair. Kevin Chan, the head of Canadian public policy at Facebook, suggests his quality of interaction and quantity of engagements are a huge part of that.

“I think the Liberals have been very innovative in using new tools on Facebook. Two things that Trudeau did were really firsts, both in Canada and across the world. First, he did a Facebook 50-second challenge, which is basically a video where he answers in 50 seconds rapid-fire questions that are more personal, showing him more as an individual,” said Chan.

“And second; what he did, or what the party did, was announce his whole platform live on Facebook. He went live from behind the stage and started it by saying ‘Hi everyone on Facebook, I’m Justin Trudeau and I’m about to announce my entire platform live just for you. Follow me on stage and let’s get started’. And people could send questions in while he did this live and they were answered live.”

All press is good press

With the sheer volume of online participation, from over 6 millions tweets during the campaign to 4.4 million unique Facebook accounts producing over 33 million interactions – posts, likes, comments, and shares – on Facebook since June 1, it’s been easy to see who might be getting the most attention but less easy to qualify it as good or bad press.

On Facebook, while Trudeau has individually led among the leaders, the Liberal party has gone from first to second in popularity while the Conservatives have skyrocketed to the top spot.

“I think Justin Trudeau did the best overall,” argued Mark Blevis, digital public affairs strategist, on which leader attracted the most mentions on Twitter. Blevis is on contract with Twitter, giving analysis of the numbers, and has tracked popularity and issue coverage since the start.

“Justin Trudeau owned the first week online, Harper took over and dominated for the next two weeks, but Trudeau resumed control from the fourth week on. But that doesn’t include sentiment. It could be all Justin Trudeau-bashing, or entirely neutral. It can be almost anything, but he certainly garnered the most attention online.”

While the Conservative party holds the top seat and has a high level of interactions, if you look at all four parties over the past 12 months, the NDP demonstrated the highest percentage of growth, with an astounding 355.61 per cent, compared to the Conservatives at a still-impressive 297.15 per cent and far beyond the Liberals and Bloc with 76.62 and 81.74 respectively.

When it comes to interactions on Facebook and Twitter, Mulcair is consistently second. The problem is, those interactions can’t be clearly defined as positive or negative.

“We don’t look at sentiment either,” said Chan. “We don’t know if these are people saying that Mr. Harper for example is fantastic or if he is maybe the opposite of that. This is just meant to give us a sense of who is being talked about.”

So on one hand, millions of Canadians could just be smack-talking one of the leaders into high “popularity” and not actually supporting them.

On the other hand, if Canadians are too busy discussing Trudeau or Harper, good or bad, that’s less attention for the other leaders and that is always good.

Debatus Interruptus

The Green party was particularly crafty with social media and punched well above its weight as the fourth party. While the Elizabeth May didn’t come out on top on any platform, they did something remarkable that had a bigger impact than money could have ever bought.

“It was brilliant. I think that is probably one of the biggest standouts of this election. She was shut out of a democratic discussion and she found a way to have her voice heard and she knocked it out of the ballpark,” said Blevis.

May, who was invited to participate it only two of the five televised leaders’ debates, met with the people at Twitter and worked out a way to get in on the discussion: she would tweet and post videos and respond in live time to the questions being posed through the debates she was shut out of.

“In the grand scheme of things, she probably only spoke to her base and the hardcore engaged pundits who really geek out of this stuff. But she got tons of media coverage,” said Blevis.

“She got more media coverage than she probably ever could have paid for. She was in national and regional news for days after that, but if she tried to get that level of media attention again, she’d have to shell out big dollars but she found a way to get it for almost free.”

National and international coverage showed a leader, denied a spot in a democratic debate but refusing to be silent, using social media to insert herself into the discussion, force her opponents and her critics to listen and acknowledge that she had just as much to contribute – and more than one complaint.

Of the three leaders who participated in the Sept. 17 Globe and Mail debate, Trudeau’s Twitter account was the most mentioned during the debate at 8,126 tweets. He edged out Mulcair, who placed second with 5,562 mentions and Harper with 5,394 mentions, but May beat them all.

Her account had 14,161 mentions throughout the debate, with her video responses to the moderators questions wildly popular, making the stunt an undeniable success and example of marketing genius.

“If you don’t do something remarkable, you’re not really worth noticing in social media because you’re not just competing with other politicians, you’re competing with everything,” said Blevis.

The fight isn’t over

While 3.6 million Canadians voted at advance polls across the country and an untold number of special ballots and ex-pats have yet to be tallied, the majority of Canadians will wait to vote on October 19 and social media will likely play a huge factor on Election Day.

Already, people are tweeting vows to vote and changing their Facebook photos to show “I will vote on Oct. 19.” The platforms expect to play a huge role in getting people out to vote.

“There are 20 million Canadians on Facebook and about 70% of the population is actively on the internet, so Facebook has the opportunity to be a great civic engagement platform,” said Chan.

“We felt strongly that we have a helpful role to play in connecting Canadians with their parties and leaders but also in helping people talk about the election and start thinking about the election.”

Facebook, in partnership with Elections Canada, will give Canadians an option Monday to click a button and declare themselves voters for all of their friends and family to see or click a link that instead takes them to Elections Canada for more information.

On Twitter, the advance poll station selfies will be replaced with voting day line up selfies and the hashtag #IWillVote is expected to trend nationally, another initiative that will encourage voters to go to the polls.

A Twitter survey found that 83 per cent of users intended to vote — a much higher voter intention rate than their non-Twitter counterparts.

According to Ladurantaye, the survey showed 62 per cent of Twitter users said they didn’t know how they were going to vote yet or they knew but were willing to be persuaded.

“So the idea that Twitter is this hyper partisan echo chamber where nothing new gets decided doesn’t actually hold up, because people come there looking to be persuaded and they’re willing to listen to what the parties have to say.”

Blevis is less convinced that social media, while a great tool for encouraging voters to get out to the polls, has hit its peak yet.

“The 2011 election was by no means the social media election and some might argue this was not the social media election either, in that we don’t yet know the degree to which online activity has impacted the outcome. But this is certainly been the social media election in that this is the first time there’s been wide scale use of social media for communication and mobilization within the system at the federal level in Canada. And there’s been some very innovative uses.”

Now it’s just up to the parties to make sure the debate rages on until the last ballot is entered.